1. Get out your notebook, your Anticipation Guide, and your novel. Objectives: Connect Hawthorne’s background to his writing. Prepare to read The Scarlet Letter. Generate personal responses to thematic questions. Explain the purpose of “The Custom House” introduction.

 Vocabulary work due tomorrow  Vocabulary quiz on Friday, September 21 st  Notes on Puritans & Hawthorne  Review Anticipation Guide—your opinions  Thoughts on the novel’s premise?  Read “The Custom House” intro & answer questions

 Sin  Adultery  Illegitimacy  Guilt  Punishment  Crime  Evil  Forgiveness  Revenge  Justice Think about these concepts are portrayed in magazines, television shows, books, movies. Has there been a shift in the viewpoint between our current culture/society and the past?

 Too often Puritans have the reputation of being black-clad moralists self-righteously proclaiming the values of thrift and hard work  A Puritan is one who suspects that “somewhere someone is having a good time” (HL Mencken)  To call someone a Puritan is usually not a compliment

 The Puritans were a group of people who grew discontent in the Church of England and worked towards religious, moral and societal reforms.  They contended that The Church of England had become a product of political struggles and man- made doctrines.  Escaping persecution from church leadership and the King, they came to America.  The Puritans believed that the Bible was God's true law, and that it provided a plan for living.  Puritans stripped away the traditional trappings and formalities of Christianity which had been slowly building throughout the previous 1500 years.  Theirs was an attempt to "purify" the church and their own lives.

 Separated from Rome (Catholic Church) by Henry VIII so that he could divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon  Henry married six times, divorced two of his wives, and executed two of them {SIDEBAR}

 Did value hard work and self-sacrifice  Honored material success  Wealth = reward for a virtuous life  Wore severe black clothing because that’s all they had  Valued family life, community service, art, and literature  The first in the colonies to establish a printing press, free public grammar schools, and a college (Harvard)

 The Puritans were arrogant in their religious faith and completely intolerant of viewpoints different from their own  With supreme confidence and self- consciousness, they went about setting up their institutions as though not only God but the whole world were watching

 Human beings are inherently evil and so must struggle to overcome their sinful nature.  This belief in original sin was one of the first things a Puritan child learned

 Personal salvation depends solely on the grace of God, not on individual effort.  Puritans believed in predestination, the doctrine that only those people who are “elected” by God are saved and go to heaven  The doctrine of predestination kept all Puritans constantly working to do good in this life to be chosen for the next eternal one.  The only way an individual could know that he or she was saved was by directly experiencing God’s grace in a religious conversion  Any deviations from the normal way of Puritan life met with strict disapproval and discipline. Since the church elders were also political leaders, any church infraction was also a social one. There was no margin for error.

 The Bible is the supreme authority on earth  Puritans argued that the Bible was the sole guide not only in governing the moral and spiritual life but also in governing the church and society as a whole  One effect of this belief was to make Puritan churches more democratic, organized around their congregations rather than ruling bishops  On the other hand, it led the Puritans to be more repressive in their political systems and more intolerant of others For example, they used the Bible to justify their occupation of the land and their use of force against Native Americans Puritans believed they were God’s chosen people

 The devil was behind every evil deed. Constant watch needed to be kept in order to stay away from his clutches.  Words of hell fire and brimstone flowed from the mouths of eloquent ministers as they warned of the persuasiveness of the devil's power.  The sermons of Jonathan Edwards, a Puritan minister, show that delivery of these sermons became an art form. They were elegant, well formed, exegetical renditions of scriptures... with a healthy dose of fear woven throughout the fabric of the literary construction.  Grammar children were quizzed on the material at school and at home.  Great pains were taken to warn their members and especially their children of the dangers of the world.

 Three English diversions were banned in their New England colonies: drama, religious music and erotic poetry.  The first and last of these led to immorality.  Music in worship created a "dreamy" state which was not conducive in listening to God.  Since the people were not spending their time idly indulged in trivialities, they were left with two godly diversions.  The Bible stimulated their corporate intellect by promoting discussions of literature.  Greek classics of Cicero, Virgil, Terence and Ovid were taught, as well as poetry and Latin verse.  They were encouraged to create their own poetry, always religious in content.

 One of his ancestors had been a presiding judge a the Salem witch trials, another persecuted Quakers  Fascinated by the Puritans  Hawthorne was intrigued, even haunted, by his paternal ancestors, and they appear in his fiction on more than one occasion.  Always looking backward to the past

 Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts.  He spent time in Maine as a youth and spent some time living in Boston, but much of his life until 1850 he spent in Salem.  It was in Salem, too, where Hawthorne met Sophia Peabody whom he married on July 9,  The Hawthornes lived in Concord after they married, but they returned to Salem late in 1845, and in 1846 Hawthorne took the position of Surveyor of the Port at the Salem Custom House.  After losing his job in June of 1849 because of a change in political administrations, and after his mother died not long after, Hawthorne announced his wish to leave Salem, which he called "that abominable city," saying that he now had no reason to remain.

 Hawthorne was drawn to writing at an early age. In his youth he published The Spectator, a newspaper which he distributed to family members from August to September of  His wit was in evidence in the essays, poems, news, and advertisements in The Spectator.  For the rest of his prolific writing life, Hawthorne published over 100 short stories, sketches, novels, children's stories, novels, and non-fiction pieces.  In his later years Hawthorne felt his muse was on the wane, but he continued to write, producing works such as "Septimius Felton," an unfinished romance.

 Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter in an astonishingly short period of time—between the fall of 1849 when his mother died and February 3, 1850, when he repeatedly read the conclusion of the novel to his wife.  Hawthorne weaves around his characters a psychologically powerful tale of the consequences of breaking a moral code.  Skillfully, Hawthorne investigates how guilt and sin operate on the innermost workings of his characters’ minds. (hello, Crane!)  Literary scholars have hailed Hester Prynne (the main character) as the first true heroine of American literature.  Hawthorne characterizes her as a whole person—woman, mother, sinner, and member of the community—rather than as a stereotype, as so many writers at that time cast their female characters.  In an era when most novelists were concerned with detailed portrayals of the outside physical world, Hawthorne presented mental and emotional truths.  In a critical analysis of Hawthorne, Roy R. Male, English professor at the University of Oklahoma, writes: Hawthorne possessed what one of his friends called “the awful power of insight,” and his fiction remains valuable chiefly because of its penetration into the essential truths of the human heart.

 Many consider Hawthorne to be the first writer to truly represent American perspective and style in a work of fiction.  Prior to Hawthorne, no American novelist had yet made an impact on Europe’s literary circles.  According to Henry James, a later American novelist and critic, “the publication of The Scarlet Letter was in the United States a literary event of the first importance.”  Along with others, James felt “a satisfaction in the idea of America having produced a novel that belonged to literature, and to the forefront of it.”  Born and raised in the United States, Hawthorne steeps his novel in the early American past, creating characters and a plot that reflect the very roots of American culture.